Meta

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With release 12.0.7 we decided to give a larger space to the map and minimze the menu bar.

Now you can make the most of your iPad screen and still have everything at your fingers…

Let’s have a look at some new features…

1) Bottom bar can be dragged accross the screen.The world map is now presented using the whole screen and you can move the menu bar vertically, so that it never covers the area you are working on.

2) Navigation arrows. We added back and forward navigation arrows that let you navigate through the different filters you created. You apply the olours and then you use the filters to present the set of countries you want.

3) TV output. If you have a cable or wi-fi connected, you can present the map on an external screen. When you navigate through the pages or you change the layout of the items, the external screen will present the changes.

4) Page menu. We gathered in one menu, all the page’ s related functionalities. You can edit the current filter or browse the existing ones. You can also access the snapshots gallery or zoom the page.

5) Filter name and notes. One touch one the filter’s name in the middle of the bottom bar and you will be able to edit the name and add a description. You can rename the filter in order to remember the group of countries and you can use the memo to describe in details the difference.

You can go back to the map by touching again the middle of the bottom bar.

6) Custom colours. You can now use additional colours from those preset. Just set the values for the Red, green or blue bar and add the new colour to the project, to the group or both. If you add the new colour to the group, it will be available to each new project created within the group.
Tap on the colour in one of the two sections to read/edit the custom items.
Custom colours are available any time you need to apply a colour.

When we decided to enter in the iPad’s software development business, we had the clear idea that what we would introduce in the market should have been something bringing value added to the office’s productivity.

When you work in an office there are many tasks that would require automation to reduce the effort and speed up productivity. Sometimes, budget constrains, might reduce the amount of automation versus a more intensive use of human resources.

The final purpose of our Apps is to introduce office-automation or best practice at a very affordable cost. If you have an iPad at office, you already believe that the business is moving toward a more mobile version. The iPad is the extension of your computer, you can do additional tasks just everywhere!

The maps businessThe first set of applications we introduced are related to the report-publishing business. You work in a multinational company, you need to produce periodic reports with maps and data, where would you find the right map?

Let’s not shoot higher than we need…Certainly there are many software out there creating maps. On internet you can find many companies providing that kind of service.Some of them are very expensive and/or would require your company to purchase licenses. In most of the cases, if the only thing you need is a map for a presentation, these solutions are not what you are looking for…

…but still we want to look professional:Internet provides today also with free available solutions that could fit (partially) the task to create a thematic map or just a world map with colours indicating a footprint,some distribution,etc.Very often, these solutions are free but also have some limited customisations (or they add a logo or a copyright notice in the footprint).Presentations that are aimed to be sent to the high management cannot have embedded copied (or/and somehow modified) content from internet or other sources. Adding these kind of pictures in the presentation, will make it look like a draft version or just not professional enough… More, if your target audience is a room full of people (e..g presenting on stage), you really don’t want to show them additional distracting details that are not 100% compliant with your company (e.g. other companies logos).

Considering all the reasons above, we decided to build two distinct applications,helping people to create quickly, fully customisable maps, for any document or presentation.

WorldMap+: your iPad can now generate images of vectorial maps, with the colours you need, no logos, no additional not-needed information.You choose the countries,the colours, the style and the resolution; the app does the rest and you can use the resulting image in any document you need. More…you can re-use the previous maps and add details or change colours; so if you do periodic reporting, your maps will always look identical in shape and selection, and alignment,plus you will be presenting the updated version. WorldMap+ does not only generates maps….you can create reports with notes and descriptions or you can archive the projects. You can work with people in parallel or you can merge data from other projects. Every functionality in WorldMap+ has been tuned in a way that you make the most out of your iPad and your time. The result has always a professional-look.

WorldMap+

Thematic+: it is an app to generate thematic maps. You decide which country to present, which values, which intervals and the app produces beautiful professional maps with legend and descriptions. You can use Thematic+ to create an overview of acoverage or a distribution.Also this App, contains functionalities that will help you working in groups and review the draft versions. The images are fully customisable, so you can choose, colours,style and backgrounds to best match your company themes. Adding a thematic map to your presentation can really change the way your audience accepts the message.

You meet your boss and you come back with the task of putting together a presentation. It needs to be ready in a couple of days.

Have you ever been in this situation?

You might have already some ideas or a set of slides that you used in the past, nevertheless, the time is your enemy.

You need to share the requirements with your team members, decide what to put and what to exclude, you need to work in parallel and most important, you need to communicate what it is required, clearly.

This situation would require concentration, figuring out what to present, drawing sketches on several papers, handwriting the major titles…etc etc

After, you would shared the papers with your team, ask for first inputs, assign to some of them the task to merge the contents in a final deck,etc,etc.

So your papers run through the team/the office and maybe at a certain point, after several reviews and hours, become less and less clear…how many papers did you use?

If your team is spread along regions (or world wide), the task is even more complex…

Of course the task is still duable but there is a better way to do it, if you have an iPad…using Draft+ (Draft Plus).

Draft+ is an App than runs on IOS7 or higher, designed for exactly these kind of tasks.

You drammatically speed up your productivity, particularly creating the first drafts of you slide deck, merging all your inputs and maintain a history of your works so that next time, you don’t have to go searching for an old paper…somewhere.

You can control and communicate your versions remotely so that you can easily merge, review and add changes.

No need of using papers anymore! It is even environmentally friendly…you only need to print the very last version,if you needed on paper.

You can start with building a clear storyline for your presentation, maybe just the titles at the beginning…Arrange the pages according to the storyline you want to present.Adding more content…and finally creating the first draft slides.

You can use Draft+ to create the final PDF version of your slides or just send the file as a guideline for the editor, the one who is going to produce the very final version for the management.

Draft+ is fully customisable and you can paste content (images and text) from websites, other documents or other Apps that allow the copy function on the iPad.

At morePaths.com we believe in the great potentials of the tablets as an everywhere tool to boost our productivity. Particularly we believe the iPad has the right capabilities to provide an excellent support for reporting,presenting and editing in general.

If you are a manager or sales man, or you are somebody that travels a lot, and your office is most of the time an hotel, an airport lounge and you are supposed to be always ready to present, you will find among our Apps something that interests you.We are sure of this.

For example, talking about maps and presentations…

Displaying information on a map is very useful and effective.

If you work in a company that has world wide impact, whether you are representing the company footprint or the sales,some technical data, if you put a map in your presentation, the message will be make easier to be communicated.

Maybe you need a map to present the brand presence in a particular region of the world or you need just to present the head quarters locations.

In all those cases a world map is what you want to have.

There are many places online where you can get a world map but most of them requires subscriptions or the level of customisation is not enough to make a clean and ready to se image.

Because the difference between a professional report (or presentation) and an everybody-can-do-it slide depends in fact on the way the spaces are used, the way the content merges with the additional information elements.

A map is an information attribute you want to add, BUT, it does not have to take the whole attention from the audience. IT needs to “melt” with the message. The audience needs to read the slide, get the information and “almost” forget that is looking at a map.

e.g. I read a sales report, i look at the red (low performance) geographic areas and the green (higher sales). The map gives me an easy to read balance. Is there more read in Europe than in Asia? The rest of the slide will communicate where the focus needs to be.

So the world map needs to be clean and easy to read. no additional colours or shapes, no text that is not directly linked with the message we want to express, etc.

Most important, the map must be fully customisable and available off-line, so that you can work on your presentation just with your iPad anywhere you are.

Starting from the everyday work at the office, we designed two Apps for the iPad that make these editing/publishing tasks very useful.

WorldMap+

You create colourful world maps, in which you decide which countries needs to be presented and which colours to apply.

If you need to present information purely based on text, this is the App you want to have on you iPad.

Just color the country, write a comment in the legend with related flag, print it or export it.

You can customise the background so that the image totally merges with the slide or report you are preparing.

This is an example of how easily you can build an effective slide ready to be inserted in a slide deck.

The App has also a reporting capability, meaning that you can create a presentation, based on world maps and text. The App will generate a PDF alternating maps and their related notes.

We always build our Apps having in mind that you need to be able to reuse the projects, so that you can execute your tasks quickly and with less effort.

Thematic+

Using this App, you create professional-look maps representing data related to ranges or text. Using this App, you can comment data related to countries, present a brand presence world wide or comment some technical data.

The legend can present intervals or some text that you want to relate to the colours.

You can customise the background so that the image totally merges with the slide or report you are preparing.

The App is very flexible. You can select specific regions or apply the ranges to entire geographical groups such as Africa,Asia,etc.

In All Our Apps

For all our Apps we implement a logic of storing the information.

Each project you build can be stored, backed up, shared. You can group the projects per topics or per events, duplicate the projects, move a project from one group to another.

People of your team , that have this App installed on their iPad, can receive your project and continue working on that, adding information, changing, and send you back the new version.

If you work with virtual teams across the world, you will find these functionalities very useful.

You can share and send files using encryption, so , even if you are not at your office, you can still share sensitive information, from places like airports or hotels.